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digest 1997-02-26 #001
11:28 PM 2/25/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science"
Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 25 Feb 1997 12:02:11 -0800
From: Stuart Peterfreund
Subject: Re: SLS97 call for electronic distribution
speterfr@lynx.neu.edu
25 February 1997
Carol--
I don't know if you noticed, but we have logged several
"unsubscribes" on litsci during the recent exchanges on
various and
sundry subjects. Is there some cause and effect operating? Should we
be asking people to cool it? I have no desire to censor the exchanges,
but I wonder if there is something of what got Sid so exercised in
Atlanta in their tone. I piggybacked this response on your call for
electronic distribution because it speaks to electronic distribution of
a different sort.
Stuart
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Date: 25 Feb 1997 12:54:04 -0800
From: "Dr. Donald J. McGraw"
Subject: Re: SLS97 call for electronic distribution
Stuart: I have indeed determined to unsubscribe. The SLS is not a
welcoming place for scientists, in my opinion. I will present a paper
at
the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Literature and
Environment this summer in Montana. They appear to be more oriented to
the science end of L and S. I hope I am not as disappointed in that
organization as I have been with SLS. There is a definite strangeness
in
what interests SLS, it appeals to me, and science does not really seem
to
be present or truly of interest to the Society. I suspect that I
simply
do not understand what deconstruction, postmodernism and their ilk are;
clearly it is not something that intersects with any science that I
know.
I certainly wish the organization well, but as it stands, the term
'science' in SLS is certainly inconsistent with the practice of SLS.
Regards.
Don McGraw
-
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Dr. Donald J. McGraw, Associate Provost
University of San Diego |
5998 Alcala' Park | "What man really fears is not
San Diego, CA 92110-2492 | so much extinction, but
Voice: 619-260-4553 | extinction with insignificance."
FAX: 619-260-2210 | Ernest Becker
mcgraw@acusd.edu |
-
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On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Stuart Peterfreund wrote:
> speterfr@lynx.neu.edu
> 25 February 1997
>
> Carol--
>
> I don't know if you noticed, but we have logged several
> "unsubscribes" on litsci during the recent exchanges on
various and
> sundry subjects. Is there some cause and effect operating? Should
we
> be asking people to cool it? I have no desire to censor the
exchanges,
> but I wonder if there is something of what got Sid so exercised in
> Atlanta in their tone. I piggybacked this response on your call
for
> electronic distribution because it speaks to electronic
distribution of
> a different sort.
>
> Stuart
>
>
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Date: 25 Feb 1997 17:03:51 -0800
From: Ann Weinstone
Subject: literature and science?
Dear All,
I just happened to tune in to the list today, and I saw a note from
someone, a scientist, who feels that SLS is inhospitable to scientists
and
doesn't have much "S" in it's SLS. While I haven't been
following the
discussion, I do want to voice some feelings and opinons that I
developed
after the Atlanta conference.
I have been at the past two SLS conferences. From the 1995 conference
in
L.A., I remember two wonderful panels on genetics and the human genome
project chaired by "real" scientists. I recall a panel on
medical imaging
and other topics with participant historians and mathematicians. I also
attended a wide variety of other panels that ranged from topics science
fictional to traditional lit crit (only mildly interdisciplinary) to
panels about technology that used literature only in an exemplary or
evidenciary mode. The same sort of eclectic list could be drawn from
the
Atlanta conference, with the addition of some exciting and active
participation from young scholars working on projects pertaining to the
cultural studies of science.
I am dismayed, and was dismayed at this year's conference, by what I
see
as a culture war seige mentality. I am a graduate student. I believe I
am
accountable first to myself, then to my colleagues and the larger
communities and audiences that I choose to address. I don't feel that
my
work has to appeal to, or be legitimated by "real" scientists.
Nor do I
feel I have to extend a special welcome at SLS to scientists. (or
unwelcome) Nor do I feel that I should be called upon to any extra work
to
attract scientists to SLS. As far as I am concerned, by and large,
scientists are not under seige, except as academics in many fields are
experiencing unprecedented unemployment. On this point, I will bond!
However, IMHO, scientists are not an oppressed minority deserving of
restitution from neo-colonialist invaders from the humanities.
I see that SLS provides a space for people from a truly amazing variety
of
disciplines to come together and share their work, discuss
interdisciplinarity, pursue joint projects, if they so wish, or simply
come and gaze at the fabulous ideas being generating by disciplines and
approaches rather far from their own. What are the conditions under
which
"scientists" would feel more welcome? I don't get it.
I was a science major as an undergraduate. I have loved things
scientific
all of my life. I could easily have become a molecular biologist. Even
though I am now in the humanities, I wouldn't trade in my science
education for any other. The past two years at SLS, I have looked
forward
to the science-by-real-scientist panels perhaps more than the
literature
panels. It is a chance for me to hear what's going on in fields that I
don't have time to engage much with in my day to day life.
My own opinion is that the problem is not with SLS, but all around us.
There is a battle for epistemological legitimacy raging in U.S.
universities. It seems to me that SLS is, or could be, or should be, an
example of kind and productive sharing of knowledges. Co-operation
happens
in many forms. Some casual, some more formal. I've seen a whole
continuum
of cross-pollinations happening at SLS. (You punsters keep out of
this!)
I don't believe that there is anything wrong with SLS. Yes, you heard
it
here first--a graduate student without complaints! What I have
experienced
is SLS as an enormous opportunity for the display of disciplinary and
interdisciplinary variety.
I think we should celebrate and protect this.
Warmly,
Ann Weinstone
Stanford University
Modern Thought and Literature
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Date: 25 Feb 1997 18:41:45 -0800
From: Ann Weinstone
Subject: mea culpa
Apparently, in addition to my other faults, I can't spell.
Especially not on as little sleep as your average grad student gets.
Mea culpa.
Ann Weinstone
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Date: 25 Feb 1997 18:44:08 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer
Subject: Re: literature and science?
Dear All,
I wasn't in Atlanta last year, and have been to only one SSL
Conference, but I want to say AMEN to Ann Weinstone. I am a poet with a
life-long love of science. I teach a course at Clarkson University in
Lit & Sci. I grant science its epistemological power, though I do
not
consider such power total. In reading the exchange between Peterfreund
and McGraw, the thought occurred to me that scientists are not the only
legitimate definers of science. It might be argued, in fact, following
Kuhn, that scientists are uniquely unqualified to describe their
work--sort of a sociological uncertainty principle.
Ok, look, I don't want to make SLS unhospitable to scientists, but we
live in a society for which science is the final arbiter of
truth-claims. Occasionally, I will wish to raise a small voice of
protest: science does not see everything.(The same, of course, can be
said--and has been said--of poetry and poets.)
Dr. McGraw is of course entitled to his opinion of
"deconstruction,
postmodernism," etc., but his dismissal strikes me as
anti-intellectual.
While I claim no technical mastery of scientific subjects, I do
maintain
a general scholarly interest and--dare I say?--unterstanding.
I deeply appreciate my exchanges with scientific colleagues at
Clarkson, and look forward next year to teaching a course with a
colleague from biology, on evolution as a scientific and cultural idea.
I hope these remarks will not be taken as intemperate; sometimes it is
necessary to speak passionately of one's intellectual commitments,
however.
- --
- --
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial,
but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to
mistake it for a universal one."
-- Hannah Arendt
"People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so
pleased with bad."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
